Darwin seemed to be full of end of season footy trips on the weekend I spent there. With the AFL finals, rugby finals and the rugby World Cup on television the pubs were full of drunk men. I did watch the AFL but the rugby was no interest to me and I was wandering the town at night not knowing what to do when I spotted a couple of the film crew I knew from the few days earlier. They were heading to dinner to celebrate the end of the shooting of the film. I sort of invited myself along to their dinner which was at one of the most expensive restaurants in Darwin.
The crew decided we would all order a load of food and share. It was a good idea and the food was great, fish, oysters, some Thai food. As I was eating though I couldn't help but think how much it was all going to cost me. To my surprise and pleasure at the end of the night the main cameraman offered to pay for everybodys meals. What a bonus.
The following day I did not get up to much in Darwin just explored the coastal areas and set out to find the Darwin Surf Life Saving Club where one of the Mt Martha members used to patrol. I found it after visiting a couple of markets then headed for Fannie Bay goal for a quick walk through. I was too hot though to stay to long and wanted to get back to the pool at the hostel.
I spent a full day on a tour to Arnhem Land as it was somewhere I had wanted to visit but it is difficult to get to and get permission to visit unless you are on a tour. The tour left Darwin and drove through Kakadu to Arnhem Land the aboriginal owned land in the top west of Northern Territory. I booked the tour but was not really sure what it included. The drive to get there took over three hours each way and we stopped at Injalak Hill where a aboriginal guide we had collected in the local town described to us for about four hours all the different paintings we could see on the rock.
The paintings were similar to what I had seen in Kakadu although there were no barriers here to stop people from getting right up close. A couple of times I had to be careful not to brush against the paintings when squeezing between rocks.
The views from the rock were quite spectacular as well and we stopped for lunch on the side of the rock with seemingly endless views of trees and mountains. The tour also took us to the Injalak Arts Centre where we got a tour of the way aboriginal art is produced today. We met the very shy Glen Namundja whose aboriginal art is sold and displayed all over the world. The art while being produced is thrown around and left on the ground but when it enters art galleries it is only touched with gloves.
The journey back was another three hours at one point we completely ran over a small wallaby and the driver thought she had damaged the bus till we pulled into the roadhouse and got one of the guys there to check it out giving us the all clear to continue. The strange thing was where we had hit the wallaby was on the same stretch of road Campbell's tyre had blown up on the week before.
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